Saturday, January 4, 2014

Atkins Induction Day 3 - Chicken Piperade, A Quick Weeknight Dinner

Chicken Piperade- a fancy name for Pepper Chicken

Chicken Piperade is a fancy pants name for chicken and peppers. It’s quick, easy to make, makes terrific leftovers (freezes and reheats well), cheap, and tastes like you cooked for hours instead of 30 minutes.

Chicken Piperade is also flexible. You control the carb count of the dish by deciding how many portions of the veggies to serve along with the chicken—so for those of you afraid of consuming 9-12g of net veggie carbs in a meal, it’s easy to just cut back on your veggie serving size.

Yesterday felt like a LOT of food! Try as I might, I just am not in the same situation as someone just beginning Atkins Induction. I don’t get hungry that often any more and eating snacks would make me feel like a stuffed sausage. I feel better eating only 2 meals per day and that happens when you are keto-adapted.

Most people think there is “magic” happening to be able to enjoy rich dishes and lose weight. But if you look at the daily calorie totals, I’m actually restricting calories without trying, as a by-product of the food choices. I’m one of the believers that calories do matter, especially for those of us with broken metabolisms (or maybe for us post-meno gals). But the magic is there. It’s in the altered ratios of macronutrients: higher fat, lower carb, higher protein—and the micronutrient content rocks, too.

Control the carbs by controlling the veggie serving.

The nutritional quality of the food we eat also comes into play. Red and yellow bell peppers are very high in vitamin C and onions and garlic have some of the highest ORAC values on the planet. Mushrooms, even humble white button mushrooms, have powerful cancer-fighting and immune-boosting properties as well as adding great chew-bulk for very few carbs. A bargain!

Mushrooms-even white button mushrooms are healthy eats!

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts or tenders maketasty, quick, protein bases for dishes that lookcomplicated, but come together with simplicity.

The true magic of the diet comes from controlling insulin spikes post-meals, and controlling blood sugar response as well. Inflammation comes tumbling down and healing begins. The magic also comes because by controlling blood sugar and insulin, other hunger-regulating hormones come under control and hunger (and often appetite-or rather how much I can stuff down my piehole) comes into firm control which means, I'm satisfied with smaller portions. This makes me happy, happy!